Ultimate objective

takeru69 · November 2012

Hi all,

I keep reading not to only look at the scale but also use a tape or compare picture, bla bla bla ....

I don't understand, my ultimate goal is to lose WEIGHT, if what i do does not equal losing weight than it's useless for me. It does not mater how many inch i lose if it does not translate to a lower number on the scale. I also weight myself twice a day usually morning and before bed so i can figure out how my weight fluctuate during a day so i know what i have to do during a day to keep it on check.

I don't know if this way of thinking is going to give me problem on the long run but right now every time i read the opposite of what i just wrote it make me angry.

Maybe it's because there is something i don't know or my priority are not set right or i'm just obsess i i need to go back on the right path?

BTW: started at 369 down to 342 first milestone 300

noojim · November 2012

Well I guess like your title says, it's about what your own ultimate objective is... If the weight on the scales is what matters most to you, of course you're mainly going to be motivated by that. I don't know how that would be "right" or "wrong", really. If someone is motivated more by feeling fit or looking good or fitting into a smaller size of clothes, they'll have different ways than just the scales to measure their success.

keelyjrs · November 2012

Personally I don't find it helpful to weigh myself more than once a week and I like to measure myself as fat can convert to muscle so even though the scales may not have changed, my body may be slimmer and healthier as the muscle replaces the fat

oldbutnotover · November 2012

Nothing wrong with using the scales as your guide, but like everything it can become a bit of an obsessive thing. Your weight can fluctuate daily usually due to water retention. So weighing yourself every day isn't going to give you an accurate picture of your overall weight loss. That's why it's better to weigh yourself every week or every two weeks. It's just more accurate for an overall picture of your weight loss.

If you are working out and gaining muscle via toning or body building, then you may gain a bit of weight initially. This can be disheartening, but if one of your goals is to tone your body to get a lean and firm look, then you may end up weighing a bit more than you had initially planned to weigh. However, you will 'look' as slim and obviously fitter than you would without the toning. Your more muscular body would be denser than your less muscular body. Both are the same 'size', but one is heavier. The heavier, more toned body is healthier and fitter than the lighter, less toned body.

GauchoMark · November 2012

If you are a science/engineering/statistical kind of person, this should make sense:

Is decreasing the numerical value of your weight really your ultimate goal??? Think about that for a minute.

Losing WEIGHT is an indirect or proxy indicator of your real goal, which is probably some combination of being healthier, looking better, increasing physical performance, changing body composition, etc. The reason most people use this as the primary indicator (since indirect indicators are less preferable than direct ones) is because it is a really quick, non-invasive, easy to do measurement that yields pretty decent results.

As with ANY indicator... one of the most important things you can do is to get enough data and make sure it is consistent. Weighing every day is great - that is what I do - but weighing at different times of the day is inducing additional experimental error into your data, unless you are easily able to segregate them for analysis. You already know that your weight fluctuates during the day, so to make your measurements more consistent, you need to ELIMINATE that variability by picking a time and weighing at that time every day. Besides, what does is matter how your weight fluctuates during the day? All you really care about is whether or not you are reducing your body fat - how much water you retain at 5:36pm has no bearing on that.

Also, establishing a secondary metric can be helpful. I recommend % body fat - it provides additional info than weight and can be taken simultaneously with the measurement you are already taking. It is debatable that maybe this should be the primary metric, but the accuracy is somewhat questionable.

The last thing I will add is if you are weighing daily, you should have enough data to do a linear regression on your data so you can see trends and see through the error. I recommend using a 30-60 day regression since your weight loss rate changes over time.

Hope this helps, but put a little thought into your "ultimate goal" statement...

takeru69 · November 2012

If you are a science/engineering/statistical kind of person, this should make sense:

Is decreasing the numerical value of your weight really your ultimate goal??? Think about that for a minute.

Losing WEIGHT is an indirect or proxy indicator of your real goal, which is probably some combination of being healthier, looking better, increasing physical performance, changing body composition, etc. The reason most people use this as the primary indicator (since indirect indicators are less preferable than direct ones) is because it is a really quick, non-invasive, easy to do measurement that yields pretty decent results.

As with ANY indicator... one of the most important things you can do is to get enough data and make sure it is consistent. Weighing every day is great - that is what I do - but weighing at different times of the day is inducing additional experimental error into your data, unless you are easily able to segregate them for analysis. You already know that your weight fluctuates during the day, so to make your measurements more consistent, you need to ELIMINATE that variability by picking a time and weighing at that time every day. Besides, what does is matter how your weight fluctuates during the day? All you really care about is whether or not you are reducing your body fat - how much water you retain at 5:36pm has no bearing on that.

Also, establishing a secondary metric can be helpful. I recommend % body fat - it provides additional info than weight and can be taken simultaneously with the measurement you are already taking. It is debatable that maybe this should be the primary metric, but the accuracy is somewhat questionable.

The last thing I will add is if you are weighing daily, you should have enough data to do a linear regression on your data so you can see trends and see through the error. I recommend using a 30-60 day regression since your weight loss rate changes over time.

Hope this helps, but put a little thought into your "ultimate goal" statement...

Wow , it does help . thanks.

waldo56 · November 2012

The body takes in and expels about 10 lbs of water a day and about 2 lbs of solids.

If you are losing weight at 2 lb/wk you should be losing 0.286 lb/day; somewhere in the neighborhood of 2% of your daily mass balance fluctuation.

Picking this out is quite literally finding a needle in a haystack. You can spot it if you let the change stack over a long time period (don't weight yourself often), or if you track trends in frequent weight ins, but frequent weighing without trend tracking is a fruitless waste of time that tells you nothing.

prokomds · November 2012

Weight is the easiest measurement to take, but it's not the whole story. As a 5'6" woman, it's entirely possible for me to be a 140-pound size 10 weakling or a 140-pound size 4/6 beast. It's all about how much lean body mass you have. If you google "why the scale doesn't matter" you can see a lot of stories about how people have maintained (or gained) weight while their size has continued to shrink.

For now I'm sure you can keep tracking your weight and see the downward trend, but as you get smaller the tape measure is going to start to matter more. Good luck!

Ultimate objective

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